Why do we live with terrorism? How is it that we came to live in a world where a few men in a small apartment can decide to spread havoc and murder us at their whim? Terrorism is not the act of ‘militants’ or ‘insurgents’. It is an attempted genocide. Leftists should protest terrorism and we should never tarry of killing terrorists and deporting its supporters until it stops.

Our disgusting dynasty politics in America: Bush. Clinton. Bush. Clinton. Should our children have to read about America becoming a dynasty? Our ancestors fought to rid the world of the monarchy. So why are we allowing ourselves to be treated as peasants once again and allowing two families to run the United States?

A history of Jewish philanthropy: In the days of Benjamin of Tudela the Jewish communities were self-sufficient. In the days of the Rothchilds, Warburgs and Montefiores the wealthiest Jews took care of poor Jews in far away places. Today under the guise of ‘Tikkun Olam’ Jewish philanthropies believe they are responsible for the whole world, while they ignore the poor among their own nation.

Who would colonize themselves? Lately prominent Russian, Israeli and American intellectuals have tried to foist foreign powers upon their own countries. Kasparov spoke English when he was arrested. An editor at Haaretz tells foreigners to ‘rape’ his country. Americans demand foreigners judge their president for war crimes. Why would anyone allow a foreign to colonize them?

Where does the International Criminal Court draw its power? A court derives its powers from the people. This is especially true in a democracy. Lately democracies have surrendered themselves to the power of the courts. The International Criminal Court is the primary example of a court whose powerbase is only itself and which somehow has projected its jurisdiction to include the whole world.

England's evil double-standard: Before the Holocaust England made sure Jews were prevented from entering Palestine. After the Holocaust only 1,000 Jews were permitted to immigrate to England. Yet today English students, intellectuals and authors claims Israel should not exist and that Israel is the source of the conflict between Islam and the West. We admire Churchill, but this other England, this England of hypocrisy, has a long and dreadful history.

My World Without Islam: A review and critique of Foreign Policy’s ‘World without Islam’ article. The article in question claimed a world without Islam would be the same as the world we live in today. I grew up in a world without Islam. In my rural hometown people lived peacefully and children didn’t recite verses of hate in school and women dressed as they pleased without fear that their own brothers would murder them. Don’t kid yourselves. A world without Islam would be very different than the present world.

Why do we live with terrorism?Seth J. FrantzmanJanuary 27th, 2006

Does it seem odd when you stop to think about terrorism? Does it seem odd that we live in a world where people detonate bombs, sometimes strapped to themselves, in order to kill people. There goal is only to kill people and they decide which people have to die based on the ethnicity, religion or country of origin of those people.

The media obscures terrorism and fabricates it so that we are not shocked by its very existence. The media calls the terrorists 'militants' and the media rarely if every tells us anything about the victims of the terrorism. When is the last time the BBC showed a picture of the victim of a terrorist act? When Benezir Bhutto was killed it was styled an 'assasination' and Ban Ki Moon described it as an 'assault on stability.' In this way terrorism which is the murder of innocent people, becomes part of a 'conflict' or a 'struggle'.

But terrorism is not part of a conflict. What conflict involves people with bombs and civilians going about their daily life? That is not a conflict. To say that terrorism is part of a conflict is to say that a mugger and his victim are 'in conflict' over money. But they are not in conflict. One person initiates a crime and the other person suffers it. There is no back and forth. In order to convince us that the terrorist is part of a conflict we are told that anti-terrorist units of the state are fighting terrorism and terrorists are fighting back by killing civilians and it is part of a 'cycle'. This is like saying that since the police try to prevent muggings that therefore the police, the innocent victim and the mugger all part of a cycle of violence where the mugger is fighting against the police and the victim. It would be like insinuating that the Nazis were fighting the Jews and the Soviets and that the Holocaust was therefore merely part of the war, rather than a separate crime.

To claim that terrorism is part of our world and that it is committed by militants is to admit that we cannot stop terrorism and that we must 'live with it.' But why do we have to live with it. Why must we always be waiting for the next terrorist act. Does anyone sit back and try to understand what we are dealing with? We are dealing with a society where people decide one day that they want to murder as many people as possible, based solely on the fact that those people are different. In Iraq the media pretends that the terrorists are fighting an 'insurgency' or a 'war' against the government. The media reports that "forty people died in a bombing" but that does not tell us the whole story. The terrorism in Iraq seeks only to murder civilians and more than not those people are murdered simply because they are a different sect than the terrorist. It is not an 'insurgency' and it is not a war these terrorists are fighting.

Terrorism is genocide. This is what everyone should realize. There are no 'insurgents' or 'militants'. The terrorist genocidaire is no different than the Hutu killers in Rwanda who waged war against civilians. They are no different than the Janjaweed or Pol Pots Khmer Rouge, or the Nazi Gestapo. You may rightly point out that terrorism is more incompetent than the above regimes. Sure, it hasn't killed a million people. But in Iraq it has killed 10,000 people. In Israel it has killed more than 1,000 and in the U.S it has killed 3,000. If you add up all the death tolls it approaches a genocidal figure. Remember the definition of genocide doesn't have anything to do with succeeding. Milosevic was accused of genocide and yet the Serbs only killed 2,000 Albanians at most. Only 7,000 Bosnians are reputed to have died in the 'act of genocide' in Srbrenica. Its not numbers that make something genocide, it is the intent. Terrorism's intent is mass murder, the fact that terrorists can't accomplish their goals doesn't make them less evil.

On Sept. 12th, 2001 there were no human rights protests against the murder of 3,000 Americans by Muslim Arab terrorists. After the Madrid and London bombings there was never a human rights protest. The terrorists were never charged with violating human rights by the International Criminal Court at the Hague. Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch have never issued a report that condemned terrorists for depriving people of their human rights. Minority Rights International has never done so either. Oh, you may note that HRW has condemned some acts of terrorism, such as the Hizbullah 'war crime' of firing rockets at the civilian Israeli population. But that is not enough. The human rights mafia and the students and all the leftists have never lifted a finger to protest terrorism. When a black man was dragged to death in Texas they protested. When six black students were charged with a crime in Jena in the U.S, they protested. When a gay man was murdered in North Dakota they protested. But when hundreds of gays and blacks were murdered on Sept. 11 there was no protest. When 300,000 blacks were killed in Darfur there was no protest. Why were the Jena 6 more important than the 3,000 dead Americans on 9/11? They are more important because the media and leftist thought has told us that those why die at the hands of terrorists die in a 'war' between us and the terrorists. But we aren’t at war with terror. It is not a war. To say it is a war is to say that their method of fighting, by murdering civilians, is acceptable. Terrorism is not a war, it is not a conflict and it is not practiced by militants. Terrorism is genocide and those who engage in it are mass murderers. They aren’t criminals, the way Wesley Clark wants them defined. They aren’t guilty of hate crimes or war crimes. They are guilty of attempted acts of genocide. There is no difference between the cowardly terrorist and the Nazi camp commandants like Klaus Barbie.

Our media and our intellectuals speak of 'no way to defeat terror.' For them terrorism is a fact of human existence and authors try to convince us that terrorism is 'as old as the Bible.' We are often told that fighting terrorism only creates more terrorists. Implicitly Gideon Levy's complaint that Israel resorted to the "brute force it is so fond of" in response to Hizbullah's attack that preceded the Second Lebanon War shows that we are supposed to react with peace when terrorists murder us. Levy complains that "Israel again turned to the weapon of war as the first option" when confronted with Hizbullah terror. For Levy the proper response is to 'hear their grievances.' But the terrorist grievance is merely our existence. Can we negotiate our existence? Should the Jews have 'negotiated' with the Nazis in 1939? Should the Darfur Africans negotiate their destruction with the Khartoum regime? Liberals and leftists can negotiate their existence, it is their right to do so, but other people prefer not to.

It is not a matter of not negotiating. It is not a matter of resorting to brute force. Brute force is not the only way to deal with the terrorist. We should forever put behind us this notion that terrorism can never be defeated and that by slaughtering terrorists it will only cause more. We didn't accept such a logic when we bombed Nazi Germany into the dark ages. Did some pacifist claim that we were creating generations of Nazis by daring to oppose such an ideology? Maybe. Maybe someone complained that FDR was resorting to 'brute force.' But Brute force worked pretty well in the end. It also worked well against the Japanese. They haven't started any wars since. We are forever walking a stupid tightrope where we negotiate with terrorists and then we claim that 'you can't negotiate with terrorists it only encourages them' and then we turn around and do it again. When I say 'we' I mean collectively every country afflicted with terror. They have all done it, from Sri Lanka to Israel, the U.K and the U.S.

The policy to confront terrorism should be the policy used against Nazi Germany. It should be a policy of unrelenting and brutal war exacted upon those places where terrorism has taken route. People are always so afraid of creating refugees. In the second Lebanon War there were 500,000 Lebanese refugees. So what? That is the best way to clear out the terrorists. If there are no more people left then there won't be any more terrorists. The Soviets understood this and it is why they expelled all the Germans from East Prussia and Poland. A word was created for this in order to try to stop countries from creating terrorist free environments: ethnic-cleansing. That is what the media calls it when you rid yourself of terrorism. But why is it ethnic cleansing to remove terrorists and their supporters? In Iraq there is little or no terrorism in Kurdistan because there are no Arabs in Kurdistan. By contrast there is terrorism in Turkey because there are Kurds in Turkey. Remove the problem, which is to say the population from whence the terrorist comes, and there is no more terrorism. America removed the problem in the early part of the 19th century when Jewish anarchists were nefarious terrorists. The ungrateful foreign Jews who came to America and tried to spread their murderous anarchist ideas around were rounded up and deported. Unsurprisingly anarchist terrorist stopped the instant the last anarchist Jew was put aboard ship and sent back to Europe. It could be called anti-Semitism, but it didn't affect the vast majority of Jews, just the murderous ones and their supporters. Expelling ungrateful foreigners is a good way to rid one's country of terrorism. Foreigners commonly commit terrorism because they have no respect for the society in which they have settled. Why should they? Its not their country and they aren’t murdering members of their religion or their family in their evil acts.

Expel, deport, and if necessary bomb. That is the best way to deal with terrorists. Terrorists and their supports are a surprisingly contradictory society. They like to blow up innocent civilians, provided those civilians don't come from their ranks. Watch the way Arabs whine and wail and complain when a few of them are killed. They have giant funeral processions. The Irish did the same thing. When a member of the 'heroic' IRA was killed there would be a giant funeral, and an even bigger one if an 'innocent' Irish Catholic was killed by the British police forces. But the Irish and the Arabs sure liked to celebrate when people died at their hands. Society is like that. The Germans loved it when their bombers were flattening Coventry but to this day they complain that the Americans flattened Dresden. It must be a common trait of humanity that people hate what they are. A person who lies is the first person to accuse others of lying. Thus the terrorist is the first person to complain when a civilian member of his family is killed.

But it is no matter. Expel, deport and if necessary bomb. That is the method of stopping terrorism. If it means that 'more' terrorists will be created, so be it. The Nazis also sent their Hitler Youth into battle at the end. But there came a time when all the Nazis had finally been killed. That is the way we must deal with terrorism.

That is how students may one day view the history of the American presidency if Hilary Clinton wins the 2008 presidential election. If she wins reelection that could mean that America is dominated by two family dynasties for 28 years (1988-2016). That is a depressing thought given the fact that Americans have traditionally been adverse to political dynasties. Why is it that the dynasty has now come to prevail in American politics and why has it come to prevail in both major political parties, despite their very different cultures? Furthermore why aren’t Americans angry at the way the American presidency is being passed back and forth by these two families, like it is some sort of birth right?

The dynasty has always existed in American life. The Bushes and Clintons are not the first family dynasty in American politics. The Adams family had two presidents in the 19th century and a third Adams was a well known writer. The Taft family had one president and another who became a very respected senator. The Roosevelt family had two presidents. The Lodge family produced two important advisors to presidents. The Kennedy’s produced one President, an attorney general turned presidential nominee and a long serving senator as well as numerous other holders of lesser office. The Romney family had produced two governors.

The emergence of the dynasty has been a feature of the Democratic party more than the Republican one traditionally. This would seem odd given the fact that the Republican party is derided as the party of tradition and of money. However the democratic party has long suffered from an inability to produce mesmerizing leaders and thus falls back on the romance of aristocracy. It is perhaps the Republican’s luck that the Republican rank and file do not desire a Camelot-like romance with their leader. They have often preferred the Barry Goldwaters and Newt Geingriches. The ethos of the democratic party is filled with the need to have a romantic leader because the democratic appeal is to ‘the people’ and the people supposedly need to be led by a sort of god-king, someone to whip them up and stir their hearts. This is no surprise. Parties that base their support on ‘the masses’ need spectacle in order to motivate those masses.

Despite these cultural differences between Democratic and Republican rank and file, neither party has produced a large number of dynasties. The Kennedy family is an outlier in American political history. Most politicians have been solitary and it is infrequent that children follow their fathers into politics. But the American presidency is also an outlier, it is a unique office and it is therefore interesting that it has now become a football to be passed back and forth between two families.

The emergence of the Bush and Clinton families into presidential politics was perhaps improbable. The Bush’s were a family of oilmen. George W. Bush’s grandfather was the patriarch of the family and the first one to hold office. Bush sr., after a stint in the armed forces, was a career politician before becoming President. His sons George and Jeb both held governorships of two large states and it was primarily good luck mixed with a brilliant team of advisors that brought George Bush to the presidential limelight in 2000. One author has written a book titled the Revenge of the Bush Dynasty and other books on the rise and fall of the ‘House of Bush’ have followed. Was it revenge that brought George W. to the limelight in 2000. Was a thirst by the Republican party for revenge? It is not clear. Bush was young and he was the governor of Texas and he had proved that he could be a formidable politician there. He was also trustworthy and it appeared in 2000 that the Republican party could not produce anyone else with those traits. John McCain was viewed as too radical and not an adherent to the Republican philosophy.

But if the emergence of the Bush’s was accidental then the emergence of the Clintons is even more so. Bill Clinton did not come from a good family. He had no father and his mother was reputed to have been a prostitute or at least a woman of low repute. Bill did everything he could to distance himself from that, attending Oxford and being ‘first in his class’ wherever he went. However when it came time to run for office he returned to his home state. The strange alluring corruption of Arkansas and the Hicksville atmosphere in which Clinton was born never left his side. His wife, the cold and calculating Mrs. Clinton, who campaigns under posters of ‘Hilary’, road Bill into the white house and used sympathy over his philandering to obtain a senate seat in New York. Her path to the white house was therefore less traditional but more calculating and it was understood from the very moment that she was her senate seat in 2000 that it was a stepping stone to her party’s nomination in 2008. She was lucky to have Bush win in 2004 otherwise her plans would have been dashed. She could not have run in 2004 because of complaints about her inexperience and she wisely allowed John Kerry to take the fall to Bush’s second term. But we see now the true calculations of the Clinton family. While Hilary campaigns in California her husband Bill campaigns in South Carolina against her rival, Barak Obama. This is the ultimate slap in the face to America. Bush sr. did not sink so low as to campaign for George W; whether this was because he would have hurt George W. more than helped him or out of his respect for the fact that it was his son’s campaign and not his is not clear. But the campaigning by both Clinton’s is a cold and sleazy attempt to remind voters that a vote for Hilary is really a vote for Bill to have a third term, which everyone wanted him to have in 2000.

How did American politics descend to quickly into this morass. Americans point fingers at Mr. Putin and deride Russia as a dictatorship, but at least Russia does not have dynasties holding the lever of power. Americans may well say that our system is surely better for the elections are free and fair and the primaries allow anyone to run from either party. To be sure this is true. But then it is the American people and the party bosses who are to blame for transforming the country into a dictatorship of two families. It is the party bosses especially who have resorted to this cynical manipulation and have taken the ‘easy road’ by choosing people already familiar to the American people, and putting good advisors around them and running them as one might show a pony. The truth is there are no more Reagan’s or Goldwaters or Carters. There is no more individualism in American politics. The individuals such as McCain, Obama and Giuliani are being washed away. This is the great irony. Whereas the caliber of people who stood for the presidency between 1988 and 2004 was incredibly weak (Dukakis, Dole, Al Gore, John Kerry, Dean, Jesse Jackson), the caliber of people running today (Giuliani, Hukkabee, Obama, McCain, Romney, Richardson) is quite high. But it is not these high caliber people that appeal to the American people, it is the easy choice that appeals to Americans and that choice is Hilary Clinton and her husband.

We know that the Clinton daughter is already being ensconced in politics and she is being prepared with the accoutrements of royalty to follow in the footsteps of Hilary. We saw her campaigning in New Hampshire. Her campaign style is being honed; she does not speak to the press, which is precisely the type of condescension for the American people that is seeping into our system with the dynasty politics. George W. had it too when he refused to debate at one point in the primary season, refusing to appear on the same stage as losers like Alan Keyes and Dennis Kucinich in 2000. He was right to do so, but he was also condescending to do so. Jeb Bush was considering a run for the presidency but has, perhaps, wisely postponed it because he knows that American people will not vote for another Bush in 2008 after the troubles this administration has slugged into. But perhaps there will be another chance for a Bush to be in the white house in 2016. Then it will be clear that our country has taken a serious and disturbing misstep. For 200 years America steered clear of the dynasty. It brought some very good people to the halls of power and this hybrid vigor allowed the country to encounter one great success after another in the economic and political sphere. But now that vigor is dying and rigormortis is setting in with these Bushes and Clintons. Most disturbing of all, the media and the American people shrug their shoulders and resign themselves to this semi-feudal monarchy, much in the way the yeomanry of old did. That is precisely what a dynasty insinuates, it insinuates that the people are peasants, and perhaps that is what we have become.

A history of Jewish philanthropySeth J. FrantzmanJanuary 29th, 2008

When Benjamin of Tudela, a 12th century Jewish traveler, visited Jewish communities from Spain to India he mentioned many things about them. They varied greatly in their diversity and language and even in some of their traditions. From the greatest communities such as Baghdad where 40,000 Jews lived to the smallest communities of a few hundred he saw all aspects of Jewish life. Although he mentioned many things he did not touch on one thing that seems to be central to Judaism today; philanthropy. He mentioned Jewish communities in which the community cared for itself and where the poor received charity from the wealthy. But he never mentioned an instance in which Jews formed non-profit organizations and helped to provide flood relief to Africans or helped provide money for 'Jewish-Arab coexistence.' He did not mention any groups of wealthy Jewish donors traveling hither and thither trying to find 'worthy' causes to help. Perhaps Benjamin was ill-informed.

The enshrinement of Jewish philanthropy began officially in the 19th century with such famous Jewish patrons as the Rothchilds and Moses Montefiore. These giants of Judaism were wealthy men and they took on their shoulders the needs of the Jewish community in which they lived as well as Jews abroad. Montefiore lobbied furiously for Jewish rights in North Africa and in his many journeys to Palestine he helped establish new communities for Jews outside the walls of the Old City, where they had hitherto lived in cramped and disease ridden areas. Rothschild too provided charity for the Jewish ghettos of Europe and for the nascent Jewish farming communities of Palestine. In the history of these Jewish philanthropists we do not see donations to non-Jews. Their principle interest were Jewish communities.

Beginning in 1881 the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society began to help Jewish refugees and those fleeing persecution. Beginning in 1914 the Joint Distribution Committee (JDC) began to function as a Jewish philanthropic organization aimed at easing the suffering of Jews in Palestine and Eastern Europe. Together with other organizations these large philanthropies were at the forefront of Jewish giving in the 20th century. They provided relief for Soviet Jews and Jews in Eastern Europe in the 1920s and after the Holocaust they provided resettlement opportunities for Jews to move to Palestine and elsewhere. After the creation of Israel they provided social services for the sick and elderly. In addition they provided aid for Jews in places such as Egypt and Algeria who were either persecuted by the government or forced to flee. In the 1980s and 1990s they provided aid to Jews of the former Soviet Union and Ethiopian Jews.

But along the way something changed. In 1986 the JDC created the International Development Program or IDP to provide 'non-sectarian aid' which was a code word for 'aid to non-Jews.' HIAS also boasted of helping 4.5 million immigrants, many of whome were not Jewish. The motivating factor behind this change in tact was a new interpretation of Jewish culture. According to the JDC, "one of Judaism’s basic tenets, tikkun olam, tells us that we cannot be bystanders in a world where pain and suffering abound. It challenges us to embrace communities everywhere; especially those touched by catastrophe, poverty and injustice. Since inception, JDC has offered aid to non-Jews in crisis overseas." HIAS speaks of "The central teachings for Jews emphasize offering welcome, protection and love for the Ger (stranger)." This is interesting. Although Jewish organizations claim that this newfound need to help non-Jews is enshrined in the Torah (according to HIAS it is mentioned thirty-six times) one wonders why Benjamin of Tudela, Montefiore and the Rothchilds were so blind in their understanding of the Jewish religion. Maimonidies too and the Vilna Gaon fail to mention that aiding non-Jews is a central tenant of Judaism.

How did this idea of Tikkun Olam become central to so many Jews and so foreign to other Jews? Why did Jews decide that they must take on their backs the suffering of the world. One reason that Jews decided that "since we have suffered so much persecution we must help others" is because Jews became secular. Secular Jews make up a large majority of the wealthiest Jewish donors to organizations and they make up the only Jewish donors to the 'non-sectarian' programs that Jewish philanthropies and non-prophets specialize in.

But Jewish donation policies have recently gone one step further. As the quest to find new non-sectarian donors grows Jews have realized that the most favored community to give aid to is not Jews or Israeli Jews but rather the Israeli-Arabs. According to one Jewish philanthrpist it is a Jewish responsibility to help the 'natives' of Israel, which according to him are the Palestinian Arabs. Recently a group of wealthy Jewish donors arrived in Israel and travelled up to Umm-Al Fahm, an Arab village and begged the local Arab leadership to allow Jewish money to flow to Arabs in Israel. Oddly enough the Arabs dared to boycott the Jewish donors. The Jewish donors were up in arms, declaring that the Arabs were not helping 'coexistence' by failing to put out their hands for the Jewish dole.

It is an odd situation to see Jews begging to give Muslim Arabs money. For 1200 years Jewish resided under Muslim colonial occupation throughout the Muslim world. Jews were sold as virtual slaves in the Yemen. In Egypt and Greece they were used as prostitutes. They were forced to wear a special color clothing that marked them as Jews and they were could not rebuild their synagouges, ride horses, own weapons or build their houses bigger than their Arab neighbors. At the Western Wall in Jerusalem, the holiest site in Judaism, an Arab neighborhood called the 'mughabi quarter' was constructed and a new Muslim holy site of 'al-Burak' was discovered. The Muezzin was told to yell extra loudly on Yom Kippur, the holiest Jewish day. In other places such as Algiers Jews were forced to wash the streets on Shabbat. They were expelled from their homes and their lands by such Muslim regimes as the Almhohades and they had to pay a special 'head tax' or Jizya for being 'Dhimmi'. Sometimes rioters slaughtered them as took place almost every century in Safed. In short, they lived the lives of a discriminated minority. Not once in Jewish history in the Muslim world did wealthy Muslims provide charity and philanthropy for Jews. But as Jewish donors note, 'since we were persecuted so much we must give aid to others.' It is odd that this policy did not apply to starving German children in the 1950s or the ruined German cities that were gutted by the war. After all why did the Jews not recall that "we were perseucted so we must help others' then? Where were the Jewish donors to go to Germany in 1950 and make sure that the Germans received enough financial aid? Where were the special programs for coexistence and the free concerts for Germans? After all the Germans only suppressed the Jews for a decade, the Muslims did so for 1200 years? It is odd that this Jewish love to help those who harmed Jews is so strong. One would be tempted to say that only Jews would do this. Only Jews could create people like Nick Berg's father who felt sympathy for the people who beheaded his son and said "at least they looked into his eyes unlike George Bush" when he wrote an editorial in the Manchester Guardian. But one would be incorrect. Not all Jews are like Nick Berg's father or the donors at Umm al Fahm begging to help Islam.

There are Jews who do not such thing. These Jews are the spiritual descendants of Benjamin of Tudela and they have never heard of this concept of Tikkun Olam, or rather they have interpretted it differently. For those religious Jews there are no wealthy non-profits with photos of Arab women in headscarves and starving Arab children. They prefer to help their own starving children and their own women who cover their hair. According to many they are not the 'good' Jews just the fundamentalist Christians are not 'real Christians' because they don't 'turn the other cheek' and preach love for homosexuals the way 'Jesus would have'. The religious Jews and religious Christians apparently share this fate: they are not viewed as 'good' members of their religions by secular people. It is odd that secular people take such a deep interest in religion suddenly when it comes to helping the 'other'. Secular people normally don't care about God but when it comes to finding an excuse about why they must help starving African children they suddenly quote the Bible with glee. Tikkun Olam and the Ger suddenly get mentioned. A secular Jew may not know a word of Hebrew and we might own books like "the greatest stories of the Bible" without ever reading the actual Bible, but he will be versed in saying "Tikkun Olam" and taking on his shoulders the need to help every anti-semite in the world and every starving African.

One cannot condemn Jewish philanthropy for its predeliction to mostly help non-Jews or give to non-sectarian causes. It is all with good intentions. Jews give to non-sectarian causes because they don't want to be 'racist' and only give to Jewish causes. In this the Jews are unique; they are the only minority in the history of the world that have decided that helping the poor among themselves is 'racist'. So while Jewish children starve and poor Jewish families live in hovels in Israel, hundreds of millions of Jewish dollars go to help Africans and Europeans and Arabs and Muslims the world over. It is healing the world. One just wonders where that world was in 1942 when the Jews needed a little healing. One wonders where it was in 1945 when the International Refugee Organization (IRO) forbid giving one cent to aid Jewish refugees in Europe. One wonders.

Who would colonize themselves?Seth J. FrantzmanJanuary 8th, 2007

Who would invite colonizers to their country and give away their independence? It seems like an obvious question. No one would do such a thing. But history is full of the opposite example.

When the roman General and leader Pompey arrived in Syria in 63 BCE, the Jewish Hasmonean brothers, who were locked in a civil war sent their delegates to Pompey. Both demanded Roman aid. Pompey favored Hyrcanus II over Aristobulos II, deeming the elder, weaker brother a more reliable ally of the Roman Empire. In short order the independent Kingdom of Judea was swallowed up by Rome. 110 years later a vicious revolt broke out against this Roman rule and eventually lead to the deaths of two thirds of the Jewish people. It was certainly an inadvertent request by Arisobulos II to ask a foreigner to colonize his own country if only to get back at his own brother, but it was a request nonetheless.

Cortez did not conquer the Aztecs without allies. In fact most of the history of European colonization finds that the Europeans had many active collaborators seeking their aid against other enemies. In many cases the result was total annexation to Europe and the destruction of both the requester and his enemies. The Shona people of modern Zimbabwe are no exception. They asked for European help only to find their lands as well as those of their Ndebele enemies given away to friends of Cecil Rhodes and his British company.

But the process of encouraging foreign colonization of the self is not a character flaw of native peoples. It seems to be inherent in most societies. Petain and his Vichy generals welcomed the Nazis and their colonization of France. Republican Spain allowed Stalin's agents to massacre tens of thousands of Republican Spaniards. The Nazi sympathizers in England hoped for German colonization.

When Garry Kasparov was arrested in Russia recently he spoke English to the police rather than Russian, his native language. He spoke English because his court of public opinion is in the West, rather than his own country and yet he pretends that his country is undemocratic because it does not elect him. But how many people would vote for someone whose financial and emotional support is derived from outside the country? This is an all too common case with human rights activists, they frequently ally with the other and the foreigner against their own country because they are able to get published abroad, but they do not realize the degree to which the more they enslave themselves to the foreigner the less appeal they will have at home. Iranian dissidents and other famous dissidents such as Alexander Solzenitsyn were careful to reconcile this problem and careful to remain patriots while living abroad. George Bernard Shaw, who supported Stalin in the 1930s and covered up the famine in the Ukraine, was once asked why he didn't just move to 'heaven' of the U.S.S.R. He replied that his own England was a hell and he was a small Devil.

Recently the editor of Haaretz, David Landau, was reported to have said to Condolezza Rice that Israel needs to be "raped by the United States. While his comments seem extreme due to their language it is a comment that is heard quite often among Israeli leftists, academics and activists. The incident took place on Sept. 10th, 2007 and according to reports "Landau, who was seated next to Rice, was said to have referred to Israel as a 'failed state' politically, one in need of a U.S.-imposed settlement. He was said to have implored Rice to intervene." Haaretz is Israel's most 'intellectual' newspaper and considers itself the 'newspaper of record' for the country. Why its editor would encourage the colonization of his own country is not clear. What is clear is that this encouragement by left wing Israelis, disillusioned by their own country, for foreigners to 'force' Israel to do something is quite common. Given the history of people who have begged for their people to be subjugated, only to find out it isn't what they thought it would be, the modern Aristobulus IIs might do well to keep their mouths shut.

Where does the International Criminal Court draw its power?Seth J. FrantzmanJanuary 8th, 2007

A court is an institution of a state. It derives its power from the people. That is how a democracy works. A court has checks and balances in the form of other courts. In the United States the ultimate check is the elected official who can pardon people convicted of crimes. This is how a court system works. There are lower courts and there are higher courts. Courts are resorted to after people are either sued or arrested for breaking the law. The laws themselves are enacted by elected officials. The court has the power only to enforce the law. The court can order people held without bail and can infringe the normal rights of individuals in certain ways such as this. But even these powers of the courts are only given to it by the people whose elected officials allow the courts the power they have. The court is not independent of the people. In some cases, in the U.S, judges are even elected. A judge is not above the law. In only certain circumstances, such as the supreme court, does the power of the court and longevity of judges on the bench contradict this norm. But even the Supreme court is not above the constitution. These are the simple and very logical explanations of what a court normally is in a democracy.

By contrast in a dictatorship a court is a servant of the state. Its findings are predictable because it is controlled by the dictator. It brings people to justice without a code of laws and it does as it pleases. It enacts laws itself because it is imply an organ of the state. There are no bounds on this type of court.

When Charles Taylor and Slobodan Milosevic and other people have been transferred to the International Criminal Court in the Hague they have been transferred by governments. While these governments may have had the right to eject these people from their countries it is not clear from where the court itself derives its power to prosecute these people. Liberia and Serbia did not sign a protocol that surrendered their sovereignty to the court. They did not agree that this international court should have the power to arbitrarily arrest whoever it pleases. What is the burden of evidence that the International court goes off of? What laws does it enforce? The International court does not have laws to enforce because there are not, as of yet, international laws that govern the behavior of all people everywhere.

The International Court surely likes to look to other 'special' courts as its heritage. The Nuremburg trials are such an example. In the case of the Nuremburg trials the court was set up by the Allies, specifically the United States and an American judge from the state of Maine was chosen to preside. America transplanted its own values to the court. The defendant received the right o have an attorney to defend them. The outcome was not a forgone conclusion as is evident from the fact that of those Nazis on trial received different sentences. But the Nuremburg court was set up because the German court system no longer functioned and it was felt that the international community had an interest in the proceedings of the court, since the crimes of the Nazis had been against people outside of Germany.

But the ICC is no such court. It was not set up by a government. The U.S set up the Nuremburg court and controlled it. The ICC is not controlled by any government. It is not elected by any government and no elected official oversees it. It sits in the Netherlands, a tiny country that cannot claim to have the right to decide the future of the world. Yet it does just that. This court does not put people on trial based on their having killed citizens of the Netherlands. It puts them on trial based on whoever it feels it should go arrest. But where did it derive this power to issue warrants for the arrest of people? Where is the check on its power?

When the United States invaded Panama and brought Manuel Noriega to justice there was a great deal of outcry that the U.S had no right to kidnap a foreign leader and bring him to trial in the United States. But the U.S argued that Noriega's involvement in drug trafficking was enough to bring him to trial on those charges in Miami. In 1992 Noriega was flown to Miami where he faced 8 counts of drug trafficking, money laundering. The trial was held in the U.S District court for the southern district of Florida. His mug shot was taken by U.S Marshalls who are federal agents. Noriega is now facing charges in France for money-laundering. While Panamanians and others demanded he be tried for human rights violations this was not the case. In a sense Noriega was brought to justice as Al Capone was, not for his crimes but for a more minor offense. This is how the rule of law works. The U.S could not charge Noriega for crimes he committed in another country beyond U.S jurisdiction.

The establishment of the Guantanamo Bay facility to house detainees in the war on terror would seem to contradict this policy. But the detainees at Gitmo, denied access to attorneys and other normal judicial procedures, sit in a gray zone because of their having been captured in war and yet without uniform. But even in the case of the Gitmo detainees, the U.S holds them because of their involvement with terrorism against the U.S.

But the case of the ICC is different. It has given to itself the power to indict whoever it wants without rhyme or reason or the ability to appeal its ruling. Even in the case of Gitmo lawyers for the imprisoned people have successfully brought challenges to the legality of the facility in the U.S. That is the rule of law. But who can bring a case on behalf of Charles Taylor and the violation of his civil rights by the ICC. This is the problem. Even the Gitmo detainees actually receive more rights than those 'brought to justice' by the Europeans at their ICC.

The most important question is who gave the ICC its mandate. Who oversees it? Where does it derive its power to indict people? Under what law? Where is the check and balance for the ICC? Why is there no higher court above it? Why is there no way to challenge its rulings and its procedures? How was it able to decide that its jurisdiction would be the entire world?

But more disturbing is the selective and arbitrary nature of the ICC indictments. Since it files its own indictments without any ruling body above it then it has violated the central tenant of the write of Habeas Corpus. The writ of habeas corpus has historically been an important instrument for the safeguarding of individual freedom against arbitrary state action. Also known as "The Great Writ," a writ of habeas corpus ad subjiciendum is a summons with the force of a court order addressed to the custodian (such as a prison official) demanding that a prisoner be brought before the court, together with proof of authority, allowing the court to determine whether that custodian has lawful authority to hold that person, or, if not, the person should be released from custody. The ICC has no such writ. Where does it derive its power to arrest Charles Taylor and Slobodan Milosevic and indict General Nkunda of the Congo and Mladic of Serbia and others? Why have indictments been filed against only certain individuals. If the ICC worked off of a code of law then it would be required to indict all those criminals in the world who violate human rights, which is what the ICC has decided it wants to prosecute. But the ICC has no issued indictments against known and wanted terrorists. Hizbullah chief Nasrallah remains unindicted as does Bashar Asad, Bin Laden and numerous others. The greatest killers in the world in Khartoum remain unindicted, although two of their underlings have been investigated. Why is this? The ICC didn't bring the Rwandan genocidaires to justice. It didn't bring any number of mass murderers to justice. But it went after Charles Taylor? Why? Why just Charles? Why just Slobodan?

The ICTY or International Criminal Court for the former Yugoslavia decided, arbitrarily that it had the power to prosecute 'war criminals' from the Balkan wars of 1994-2000. According to its own explanation it was "spearheading the shift from impunity to accountability, it was the only court judging crimes committed as part of the Yugoslav conflict, since prosecutors in the former Yugoslavia were, as a rule, reluctant to prosecute such crimes." This would be like saying that since the U.S was slow to prosecute suspected mafia bosses that the U.N and a foreign power should have the right to do so, because the U.S. is 'slow'. Milošević's claim that the court has no legal authority rested on the distinction that, as a result, it had not been created on a broad international basis. It was established on the basis of the Chapter VII of the UN Charter; relevant portion of the charter reads "the Security Council can take measures to maintain or restore international peace and security". Furthermore a disproportionately large number, 75% of inductees are Serbs whereas there have been very few indictments resulting from crimes committed against Serbs. Needless to say the ICTY has not brought to justice any of the Nato generals who illegally bombed Serbia and murdered Serbian civilians during the war. In addition the two-year budget for the Tribunal for 2004 and 2005 was $271,854,600 (USD). But worst of all the ICTY has been implicit in murdering those it indicted when it could not obtain convictions against them. On the 11th of March, 2006, after being denied medical treatment, Slobodan Milosevic died at the courts prison. Six days earlier on the fifth of March, 2006, Milan Babic was also murdered by the court. Since the court is above the law the Serbian authorities could not investigate the cause of death of their citizens and the Dutch authorities were not permitted to investigate the cause of death which took place within the ICTY's prison. Milosevic himself had been 'arrested' in 2001 and indicted in 2002 and his trial had lasted 4 years without any conviction. The ICC has its own prison and police force located at in Scheveningen.The ICC is in itself a violator of human rights. It has no right to imprison people who do not live within Holland. It has no right to arbitrarily indict people. If the world wants to stop genocide setting up a political organization like the ICC that only indicts certain people is not the way to do it. Only when the ICC indicts its first Muslim terrorist or Muslim head of state will it prove that it has any sort of fair mandate and even then it will remain a dangerous infringement on the civil rights of humanity. Charles Taylor should be sitting on trial in Liberia for his crimes, or even in Sierra Leone. But he should not be in Europe, an African man sitting in a European man's neo-colonial prison. And that is precisely what it is. Why is the ICC not located in Kinshasa or Hong Kong? Only when African leaders can establish an international court and bring Europeans to justice for colonialism and all the other crimes of Europe will we know that 'international law' is not merely a one way street whereby Europe is able to once again insert itself as an imperial power judging others without authority.

England's evil double-standardSeth J. FrantzmanJanuary 29th, 2008

England is the most virulently anti-Semitic country in Europe. Worse of all it is a nation of hypocrites. England invented the concentration camp and yet it is today the country that whines the most about 'human rights violations'. It attempts to charge IDF generals with war crimes when it never once prosecuted one of its own officers for such crimes. Its authors claim the Jewish people do not exist, they claim Israel should not exist and they claim Israel is the source of the world's problems. The latest book by Jonathan Cook claims that Israel is responsible for the 'Clash of Civilizations.' The aftermath of the London bombings caused English people to blame Israel and the Jews for fermenting this 'clash' and thus bringing terror to England. They insinuated that Israelis were cheering when it happened, happy that England was finally suffering as Israel had suffered. In the end the consensus was clear: the 'Middle East conflict' was to blame for Islamic terrorism in England. In England the schools have begun to stop teaching the Holocaust because it is 'offensive' to Muslim students and no English student has ever protested that England's Muslim Council of Britain's boycotts Holocaust memorial day. At Oxford Holocaust deniers and anti-Semites are given the podium of the most renowned debating society in the country as part of a campaign in the name of 'free speech'.

Before the Second World War the English empire forbid Jewish emigration to Palestine, thus sealing the fate of the Jews of Europe. After the war the English army was directed to treat Jews not as victims of the Holocaust but rather as members of the countries they came from. Thus German and Austrian Jews were put in camps with Germans and Austrians, placed behind barbed wire they were forced to do manual labor and if they tried to leave they were beaten and imprisoned. This was the English way of treating the Jews between 1945 and 1947, the survivors of the death camps were put in similar camps which Earl Harrison, an American sent to investigate, described as "the same as the SS camps except without the Jews being murdered."

English Quakers sent to Europe in the wake of the Holocaust, despite meeting survivors, refused to believe that a Holocaust had taken place. Yet when they arrived in Gaza city in 1949 they happily handed out food to Palestinian refugees. Quakers frequently accused the Israeli government of 'war crimes' as early as 1948, but they denied the Holocaust.

This has always been the English way. In the wake of the Holocaust when 250,000 Jewish displaced persons were starving in camps across Europe, many maintained because the British government would not allow the Jews to settle in Europe, England again refused to take Jews. America took 72,000. 200,000 immigrated to Israel. Even Canada took 16,000. Australia took 27,000. Yet England took only 1,000. This has always been the English way.

We romanticize Churchill and we talk of him as a representative of England and its bulldog tenacity. But perhaps we have always misunderstood England. What would England be without Churchill. Would it not be the Ernest Bevin's and Neville Chamberlains of the world? It would be the appeaser and the anti-Semitic socialist. Churchill was not completely English. Despite the fact that he penned a history of the English speaking peoples and a biography of his "great ancestor" Lord Marlborough, he was not completely English. His mother was an American. Americans have always loved Churchill and so have Israelis. But perhaps they are loving the Anglophile Churchill, the American who was only aping what he thought to be English traits. After all the Churchill trait is what we consider the English trait. The stiff upper lip and the bulldog resistance to Nazism and Communism. But perhaps Churchill was simply doing what he thought a good Englishman would do. But he was only acting the part, the real Englishmen would have appeased and given up.

Surely this is a radical hypothesis. Anti-Semitism is the lowest of all traits of humanity. It is the trait of the coward and the terrorist. It is the trait of the bully and the populist, the peasant and the aristocrat. It is never the trait of a noble person. Neither is racism. Why has so much of English history smacked of anti-Semitism and why is it that today the English are so anti-Semitic? Why are their colleges full of Khaffiyah wearing students chanting 'death to Israel' and burning Israeli flags and spreading propaganda about Israel? Why do they claim from time to time that the 'Jews' are behind every political scandal and that a 'Jewish cabal' runs England.

We have cut the English slack on their anti-Semitism because they fought the Nazis. But who fought the Nazis? Was it really the English? Was it not mostly Churchill? Was it not mostly American guns and American money and American planes pouring into England after 1940 under the lend lease agreement that helped save England? Was it not Chennault and his American volunteers that helped win the Battle of Britain. Churchill may have been right when he declared that the English would 'fight on the beaches and on the landing grounds'. There is no doubt the English are tough. Histories of the English people have often referred to them as a 'Warrior race' and it is no surprise that they coveted just such martial people that they found in their empire. But being tough doesn't make one good. Yes, the English empire was more humane than that of the French, German, Muslim or Spanish empires. Yes, the English abolished slavery. Yes, former English colonies are the most successful, outside of Zimbabwe. There is much to be proud of in terms of England and its culture and its modest Protestant ways. It stood up to the Catholic menace of Spain's Philip II in 1588. It stood against Napoleon.

But the English image will be forever tainted by its frequent bouts of anti-Semitism and Jew-hatred. It can never be forgotten that it took in a mere 1,000 Jews. 1,000. That is all. My American high school teachers tried to convince me that America was responsible for the Holocaust because America didn't take enough Jews. But the United States took more than England. In fact per capita most countries in the world took more than England, including tiny nations like the Dominican Republic. England's shame will forever be her anti-Semitism and her inability to realize that she herself helped create the 'Middle East conflict' that she now blames the Jews for. She herself made sure no Jews could enter England, only to have English college students wear their Arab headscarves today and claim Israel should not exist. The BBC's disgusting reporting will forever serve as a testament. It called the Jews 'terrorists' in 1947, but it calls the Muslims militants today. England has taken in millions of those 'militants' since 1960 so that the most popular first name in England today is 'Mohammed'. But it couldn't take in but 1,000 of those Jewish 'terrorists' between 1945 and 1950. Now the English claim Islamophobia is 'like anti-Semitism'. If only the English would treat the Muslims like they treated the Jews and lock their doors to Muslim immigration, but England welcomes Islamic terrorism with open arms. England demanded the Jews assimilate to England and yet the Muslims were always encouraged to celebrate their diversity. The Chief Rabbi of England, Jonathan Sacks got it right: multi-culturalism is a way of allowing virulent anti-Semitism to prosper among the immigrants. Shame on England. Shame on her for her history. One wonders if any English student, when they take time off from complaining about America and bashing Israel, realizes the role their country played in preventing the Jewish escape from Nazi Europe and the equally damaging role their country has played since. Europeans traditionally don't like to hear critiques of their own country, after all they are too busy blaming others for their problem, like Israel and America. Its time Europeans blame themselves, and there is a lot of blame to go around for all those countries and their past of appeasement, Nazism and Communism.

My World Without IslamSeth J. FrantzmanJanuary 23rd, 2008

Foreign Policy magazine’s January issue was pretending to be provocative with the front page screaming 'A world without Islam' with a minaret in the background. The graphic adorning the story inside the magazine showed a plane zigzagging around the Twin Towers rather than slamming into them. But that is where the provocation of Graham Fuller's article ended. This story was set amidst a series of stories portraying Islam as the new Macguffin of our era. Vanity Fair described the hardship tale of a Muslim Algerian man who, after running through half a dozen European girlfriends despite his 'modest' faith, was imprisoned, wrongly, on terrorism charges. The New Yorker has showcased the likes of Mr. Gadahn, a Jewish kid who grew up in California with hippie parents and found the religion where women avert their eyes to be superior to his own culture and eventually became Osama's public relations advisor. Then there are the articles by the likes of James Carrol and others that condemn the use of the word 'Islamofascism' and suggest that Islamophobia is sweeping our world.

Fuller notes that; "Islam seems to lie behind a broad range of international disorders: suicide attacks, car bombings, military occupations, resistance struggles, riots, fatwas, jihads, guerrilla warfare, threatening videos, and 9/11 itself. Why are these things taking place?" He then asks; "Is Islam, in fact, the source of the problem, or does it tend to lie with other less obvious and deeper factors?" But Fuller concludes that Islam is, of course, not the problem. Without Islam the poor, victimized Arabs would still have become terrorists because of 'colonialism'(ignoring the fact that most Arab states were never actually colonized and for the few that were it was for a bare ten to twenty years).

But some of us know what a world of Islam would look like. I grew up in such a world. There was no Islam when I was a child, or rather I was not aware of such a thing. I lived an ideal life in a rural setting with friendly people. When I was a child women dressed as they pleased and spoke when they felt like it. Men and women were equal before the law. When my parents instructed me they never told me to hate others and there was no talk of murdering the 'infidels'. People who might have had different beliefs than us, or who were religious, such as Catholics, were not called 'dogs' or 'pigs' by my family or anyone I ever met. There was no slavery and no genocide. There was no angry preaching. I lived in a world without Islam. There was no internal or external Jihad. There was no religious Shariah law. There were no special rights for Muslims, because there were no Muslims. There was no Muslim day at my school where children read the Koran and went on an imaginary Hajj and where girls covered their hair. I know what a world without Islam looks like. It is a world without hatred and terrorism and without discrimination based on gender and without slavery and without those all encompassing terms 'Dar al Islam' and 'Dar al Harb'.

The rejoinder to my naïve upbringing is that just because I was not exposed to vicious violence doesn't mean it didn't exist and just because Islam was not part of my cultural milieu didn't mean that within my United States there was not racial strife or murder or hate. To be sure there was. A gay man was thrown off a bridge in Bangor, Maine. Swastikas were daubed on Synagogues. When I grew older I began to hear my friends parents speak of 'niggers' and 'fags.' So this was no perfect utopia I lived in.

Today I reside in a world that is precisely in the middle of Islam where Islam and its facets and its ideas and its speech and its religion and its culture are part of everyday life. Jerusalem is a city divided between Arab and Jew but one cannot go threw a day without encountering the trappings of Islam. It begins around 7am in the morning with the Arab workers screaming profanity in Arabic at one another. Later on a bus it takes the form of the cowed Muslim women, her eyes averted, a sad expression on her face which is swaddled in a headscarf that chokes her and is so tight around her cheeks that it creates lines on them and maker her face appear fatter than it is. Later on the streets at night it takes the form of Arab youth everywhere wearing western jeans and t-shirts. They are out at night drinking and searching for women to meet while their sister, the girl on the bus, is swaddled in her all encompassing clothing and is at home observing her 5pm curfew. Sometimes during the day the encounter with Islam takes the form of the call to prayer of the muezzin, blasted at an unusually high volume from a cheap loudspeaker that pierces the air and produces sounds akin to a shrieking woman, a dying horse and a man beating a dog all rolled into one. "Allahu Akhbar (God is great)" it screams. The loudspeakers are always situated so that the Muslim call to prayer necessarily is projected loudest to non-Muslim areas of town and mosques are always situated as close as possible to churches, synagogues and non-Muslim areas. When the noise pollution dies down one has time to look at the newspaper with enough time to read of another Arab women murdered in Ramlah for 'harming her family's honor." She is the seventh woman in the family to be murdered by her male relatives in an 'honor killing.' Her father strangled her while her brother held her down. Later one will read that another gang of Bedouin villagers has been arrested for gang raping a non-Muslim girl from the coastal plain. Evidently to preserve the honor of their women the Muslim must rape or date non-Muslim women, because he can't wait for marriage to have intercourse, or even if he does wait his religion permits him to have as many sexual partners out of wedlock as possible.

To live in a world without Islam would not be to live in a utopian world. It would however mean living in a world without many terrible things. There would be one less hateful ideology in the world. There would be one less religion in which the youth were educated to hate others and to compare their neighbors to pigs and dogs. There would be 500 million women in the world who could now dress as they pleased and not have to risk being murdered by their male relatives should they stay out after 5pm. That is one thing that would definitely change. Muslim women are the only women in the world who suffer these 'honor killings'. The number killed each year is in the tens of thousands. Muslim women are the only ones in the world forced to cover their entire face and entire body due to their religion. They are the only ones shut up in their homes due to purdah(modesty). They are the only ones who live in countries like Iran and Saudi Arabia that make it illegal for them to travel without male guardians and illegal for them to leave their hair uncovered in public.

Islam is not a religion, it is an ideology of hatred and a culture of suppression and murder and intolerance. It is not racist to hate Islam. There is no such thing as 'Islamophobia.' The very existence of Islam is the existence of one more hateful ideology. Islam offers nothing to the world except hatred. It is a religion that encourages the enslavement of others, the conquest of the world and specifically enjoins its members to wage war and murder people for not being members. It is a religion whose only basis is hatred and whose holy book only preaches hate and war and rape and murder. There is nothing else in the Koran. There is nothing about living a good life or about being honest or treating others well. The Jewish Bible speaks of being 'good to the stranger for you were once strangers.' The Christian Bible speaks of 'turning the other cheek.' There is no parallel in Islam. It is not a religion in the sense that there are other religions. It has no parallel with Buddhism, Hinduism, Greek Paganism, Judaism, Christianity, Zaroastrianism, Mormonism or Bahaism. It is alone in the world as a hateful religion and that is why in every country in the world where Muslims live they are terrorists and they murder their own daughters and they preach hate against others. In every country where large numbers of Muslims live with non-Muslims there is murder and killing every year. In countries where non-Muslims are a minority they are discriminated against before the law and their houses of worship are attacked every year.

We know instinctively in our hearts what a world without Islam would be like. We as a free people once yearned for a world without monarchy, we earned for a world without the all-powerful control of the church, we yearned for a world without Nazism, we yearned for a world without Communism. In each of those yearnings our prayers were answered. We now hope that this world will no longer have Islam because Islam is not something that can coexist with humanity, it is the anti-thesis of humanity. Muslims claim they merely protest materialism and the godless west and decadence and immorality and modernity. But we too protest those things and yet we do not murder our daughters and we do not murder others in the name of our religion. When a person strangles their own daughter they are showing their contempt for humanity. When a person does not defend the rape victims among them but instead murders rape victims, then one no longer is human. The Nazis were not human, in their use of technology and their Brutish disrespect for all things civil they showed their disrespect for humanity. Such is the disrespect Islam shows for humanity and it is the reason one should always hope for a world without it, where it never intrudes upon our life the way it did on Sept. 11, and where its hateful call to prayer is never blasted in our vicinity and where its terrible abuses of women are no longer seen.

1 comment:

Actually, Seth, of the U.N.- estimated 5,000 dishonor killings per capita globally (not tens of thousands, as is stated), it is the case that the majority occur in Arab/Muslim countries and in Arab/Muslim immigrant communities elsewhere. But they also occur with relative frequency in non-Muslim areas of the subcontinent and in their counterpart immigrant communities.